Definition of "belemnite" []

• A cone-shaped, fossilized internal shell of any of an extinct genus of cephalopods related to the cuttlefish. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I need hardly translate the word belemnite 'for the benefit of the ladies,' as people used to do in the dark and unemancipated eighteenth century; but as our boys have left off learning Greek just as their sisters are beginning to act the 'Antigone' at private theatricals, I may perhaps be pardoned if I explain, 'for the benefit of the gentlemen,' that the word is practically equivalent to javelin-fossil."
• "Shakespeare's country their connection with thunder is well known, so that in all probability a belemnite is the original of the beautiful lines in 'Cymbeline': --"
• "Stomach contents of a metriorhynchid were described by Dave Martill (1986) and included cephalopod hooklets, a belemnite guard and some long bones that Dave identified as those of the pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus."